


Better than Life

by Redcoat_Officer



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Computer Viruses, Corporate Espionage, Digital Warfare, Gen, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, The Elite (Parahumans), Transhumanism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:27:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28456059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redcoat_Officer/pseuds/Redcoat_Officer
Summary: Epeios doesn't do business in person. Online, he can be the competent mercenary, the suave talker, the trusted confidant with a reputation for efficiency and anonymity. He's well regarded by his clients, trusted to work on their most advanced computer systems and competent enough to go up against Dragon-made security networks and come out on top.In short, everything he's not in the real world.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15
Collections: The Cauldron Give-a-Fic-a-Thon





	Better than Life

I set my basket down in front of the cashier, watching as her eyes first widen in fear, then shift into a pitying expression. The shame I feel at that stare is nothing new; I know exactly what I look like.

My skin is a sickly pale colour, my eyes sunken and ringed by dark bags. I’m thin, unhealthily so, and my bloodshot eyes are looking anywhere except in her own. I’m flighty, fighting a tremble in my right hand. My jeans are faded, and the hood of my jacket is up. She probably thinks I’m a junkie, that I’m hooked on some drug or another to the point where I can’t function without it.

She’s not _entirely_ wrong…

A little bit of her pity leaves her eyes as I pull out my debit card. No doubt she’s been through this song and dance before; desperate addicts trying to pay for stuff they can’t afford with debit cards they stole, only to be frustrated by a cancelled card or a pin number they don’t actually know. She almost seems surprised when the card isn’t rejected outright, and my pin works flawlessly, but she’s polite enough to not let it show.

I pack my shopping away into a plastic carrier bag and step away from the checkout. I didn’t say a word to her, and she didn’t say a word to me. It’s easier that way. Definitely easier than trying to force myself to make conversations, to ignore the pity in her eyes. If we did talk, it wouldn’t be real. It’d be a front she puts on; the smiling cashier who’s _perfectly_ happy to fuel the habits of the nicotine addicts and drunks who stumble into a convenience store at ten at night.

The doors slide open in front of me, electronic senses near the floor noticing my shoes interrupting their beam, while other, larger, senses keep watch for any marked tags in my shopping. There are none, of course. I paid for everything fair and square. I _could_ have stolen them, I suppose, though it would have been even easier to dupe payment with one of my custom cards. It just wouldn’t have been _smart_.

I’m stalling. I _know_ I’m stalling. My right foot is trembling, the cashier is probably getting another weird look on her face. The guy who was behind me in the line pushes past me, clutching his pack of cigarettes like he’s afraid they’ll run away from him. That shove was just what I needed to get my feet moving, to step out into the night.

At least it’s dark out. I can focus in on the streetlights, the buildings, rather than the empty expanse of sky. It’s overcast, and the clouds are faintly lit by the orange glow of the Pittsburgh skyline. It helps close everything in, make it more manageable. I wouldn’t have gone out, otherwise.

Still, I feel an immense sense of relief as I step back into the apartment complex, taking the stairs up to the third floor and opening up my apartment, hurriedly closing and locking the door behind me. I switch on the lights, unpacking my groceries and storing them in the fridge and cupboards. One of the packets of instant ramen stays behind, as I boil some water in the kettle. Sometimes I have the energy to cook myself something more substantial – some pasta, perhaps, or a curry – but not tonight. Not most nights, either.

I eat it sitting by the window, even though there’s nothing to see. My apartment overlooks a four-lane road, a major railway and the delivery entrance to a hospital. It’s never quiet; there’s always trains full of steel rolling by, or trucks loudly reversing in at all hours of the night, so as to avoid the busy daytime hospital traffic. Sometimes I’ll look out, just to see something, but most of the time I keep the blinds drawn.

I rinse the bowl out in the sink, putting it away in the cupboard. I have other bowls, but I don’t know why. It’s not like I could bring guests here even if I wanted to. The place is a little barren, sure, but that’s not the problem. Out of sight of the windows, my apartment is absolutely filled with pieces of tinkertech.

Some are abandoned projects that I haven’t yet dismantled, others are so vital they’re wired into uninterrupted power supplies to ensure they don’t lose even a second of runtime. Those machines form a ring around a single dentist’s chair, looking almost primitive compared to the tech surrounding it.

I move from machine to machine, checking over the wiring to make sure nothing’s spontaneously come loose, and looking at the blinking lights and status screens to make sure nothing’s wrong internally. It’s a pretty delicate web I’ve built, and if even one strand of it is out of place, things could get pretty painful. It might seem strange to treat the health of this machine with more care than my own health, but it’s _important_. Maybe the most important thing in my life.

Once I’m satisfied that everything’s as it should be, I take off my hoodie and throw it over a chair. I brush a hand over the metal socket grafted into my neck, a perfect match for long the connector jutting out of the dentist’s chair. It’s warm to the touch, heated by my own body, and I pull out the little plate that protects the delicate components from the elements.

I sit on the chair, lying back carefully until I’m sure everything’s lined up right, then sink back. The connector enters the socket and starts to exchange data, before extending even further into my neck, shunting my spine and paralysing me from the neck down. It’s better than the straps I used to use; they’d dig into my arms as my body spasmed and flailed, leaving weeping sores that never had the chance to heal.

The fear at that brief moment of paralysis is still there, even though I’ve been through this hundreds of times before, but it doesn’t last for long. Within seconds, pure data is flowing through the connection, overwhelming my mind and making my own senses completely meaningless. Sight, sound, smell, touch and taste are all insufficient to explain the world of pure data I immerse myself in.

Most of the machines around me are solely dedicated to making data understandable to someone who was never meant to see it this way, a sixth sense of pure information wired directly into my head. It’s like I’m floating deep beneath the surface of the ocean, buffeted by hidden eddies and currents. The only difference is that I _control_ these currents. With a single thought I can change their nature, reshape them, spin them into complex lattices and watch their effect spread and grow.

I don’t think I could ever go back to a keyboard. It was fine for my first projects, but this is a whole other level. It’s like the difference between a blacksmith’s forge and a fully automated factory line. The latter is capable of things that are far beyond the reach of the former.

With a thought, I pull up my pending long-term projects. The Elite’s intra-cell communication network is still secure, for now, with no signs of degradations, errors or infiltration attempts. Additionally, the firewalls Agnes court, Blueblood, The Gentleman and Patrician asked me to put around their own private systems are still holding as well.

Patrician has sent in a request for an offensive code for use against Blueblood. A shame; I’ll have to turn him down over the conflict of interest. Speaking of the offensive code, my stockpile is slowly taking shape, growing in a pseudo-organic manner as algorithms spin random complicity into it to prevent anyone from trying to counter them. Some are brutish things, meant to get into the source code of a system and start deleting it randomly, crippling whole networks. Others are subtler, meant to weave their way unnoticed into a system, subverting it from within to the point where removing the code would cause more damage than leaving it in.

One of those systems is running now, woven tightly through the systems of a New Jersey Senator. It’s set up to transmit data to a political rival of his, charting the Senator’s every move. When it can’t find him, it hunts through his aides and associates. Nothing’s untouchable; if the Senator leaves his phone behind, it looks through the webcam of his computer, or his aide’s. it knows every step he makes, every lobbyist he meets. It knows he’s sleeping with his secretary, that his wife is sleeping with an old flame of hers from high school. That he knows she’s cheating on him, but she doesn’t know he’s cheating on her.

Watchdog’s feelers are starting to brush against the edges of my server farm in Toronto. The gear in my office is meant to process information, but it’s nothing without the processing power to actually make changes. My brain only contains so much power, and I don’t want to burn it out. So, I funnel money into a number of shell companies, secretly building supercomputers in warehouses the world over.

Watchdog have only ever found two of them, but both times it really fucked me over. This time I have advanced warning, so I start shifting data out of Toronto and into farms in Anchorage and Belize City. I don’t take it all out; that might let Watchdog know I’m onto them. Instead, I bring out the most essential information, leaving stuff that’s either for completed projects or projects that’ll be complete by the time Watchdog breaks through, plus a particularly vicious virus as a farewell gift.

With that taken care of, I shift my attention to spinning code into shape. There’s no job for it yet, but, if I can get stable software, I can sell it on to the Elite, or Coil’s organisation, or any other group sophisticated enough to need a network, and rich enough to afford it. My code is Tinkertech, which means I need to check it every now and then to make sure it hasn’t degraded. It loses me some customers – not everyone’s prepared to allow me access to the software after they’ve bought it – but most people accept my discrete maintenance as the cost of building networks so complete that it takes Dragon _days_ to break through them.

I immerse myself in my work, not really paying attention to the passage of time. It’s fluid right now anyway; my mind isn’t exactly shackled to my body at the moment, so time tends to pass pretty irregularly. I lose myself in the data, spinning code like a spider spinning silk, until something flashes inside my mind, a message from a prior client that my algorithms have flagged as high-priority.

**URGENT – New Message from Faultline#0042**

**Faultline#0042:** Need you for a job. Now. Triple usual rate. Window closing fast.

I divert my attention, weaving together a response in an instant. The message system is one I designed specifically for trusted clients.

 **Epeios#0001:** I am here, but I need details.

**_Incoming call from Unknown Number…_ **

Faultline is one of my most trusted clients. The services she requests are low-cost compared to my most lucrative contracts, but she hasn’t missed a single payment. Her work is interesting, too. Barring that time she asked me to set up a money-laundering scheme through her front businesses, she usually requests offensive ops or tactical support. The last thing she requested was – I pull up the relevant transaction in an instant – floor plans and security for schematics for the PRT’s Asylum East.

Less than a second has passed in real-time. I accept her call.

 **Caller:** “We’re pinned down inside Asylum East. The facility has gone onto complete lockdown. I can breach the walls, but we still haven’t reached our target and the corridors are filled with containment foam sprayers.”

**Synthesising voice…**

**Epeios:** “Triple the usual rate for offensive cyberwarfare, plus the standard rate for operational support.”

 **Caller (Faultline):** “Deal.”

I abandon my projects entirely, switching my attention out of my little space and into the turbulent ocean of the wider networks that make up the internet. Asylum East is shut away from sight, of course, safe and sound on the PRT’s own Intranet. There’s an air gap, which makes breaking through a pain. I can see Faultline’s phone on the network, though. She’s got a good data plan. That gives me an in.

 **Epeios:** “I’m downloading files onto your phone. Hope you don’t have anything important on there; it’ll eat up pretty much all of the space on it. The download will take time, but it should be done by the time you reach the main server room. Once you’re there, plug in the phone. Until it’s in, you’re on your own.”

 **Caller (Faultline):** “Understood.”

She hangs up, and I start to prepare a whole battery of offensive packages. I wouldn’t normally work on the fly like this; it’s always better to do prep work in advance and be guaranteed a sure run thing, but sitting back compiling code all night doesn’t sound as fun as dancing my way through a PRT system on secure lockdown. So I throw together what I can in the time I have, and wait until the program I installed on Faultline’s phone reaches out to me as its jacked directly into Asylum East’s server room.

None of the USB ports on PRT desktops accept anything more complicated than a wired mouse, but the ports in the server rooms are left open, in case any upgrades or maintenance need to be done. It’s a vulnerability, but, in all fairness, it’s the kind of vulnerability you can only exploit by actually being in the secure server room of a PRT facility. Or, in this case, having a team of mercenaries who can do it for you.

**New Message from Faultline#0042**

**Faultline#0042:** It’s in.

 **Epeios#0001:** I see it. Going dark. This may take a while. A few hours, perhaps.

 **Faultline#0042:** Understood.

This is why I like Faultline, and people like her. A lot of people would get a little pissy if I told them they’d have to hold out for hours, like yelling at me is going to make any fucking difference. I’d like to see them brute force their way through advanced security systems with only their fucking brain. It takes as long as it takes, and Faultline understands that.

I do the digital equivalent of dipping my toe into the water to check the temperature, only to be met with the familiar ice-cold chill of Dragon-made code. I shouldn’t really be surprised; Dragon didn’t code _every_ PRT system, but she pretty much has a monopoly on their Parahuman prisons. I guess the Asylums fall under that branch, which is a really miserable thing if you stop and think about it. Still, at least this isn’t Dragon’s most vicious code. I hunted down the Birdcage once – I wasn’t even hired to do it, I was just curious – and the code on that thing was an absolute monster, shifting and reacting like it was alive.

This code is primitive compared to that nightmare, but it’s still the toughest thing on the market. To beat it, I need to be smart. So the first thing I do is act stupid, sending in some of my custom viruses to act like any other meatspace hacker, relying entirely on programs that are… well, stupid. Incapable of ingenuity or flair. They hit Dragons code exactly like any other program would hit it, and the code responds like any other program would.

But I’m not like that; I’m an intruder here, a human mind thinking at the speed of a machine. It means I act unpredictably, those little flashes of human imperfection that no machine can accurately predict. I see the openings Dragon’s code leaves, the ones my code creates, and I strike with new programs, new code spun on the fly. They never last long, bur gradually they chip away at the integrity of Dragon’s defences, her code responding slower and slower until eventually it collapses.

Asylum East fills my perceptions; temperature sensors wired up to the air con, weighted plates in the visitor rooms to catch smugglers, containment foam turrets scanning the corridors, electrical security barriers of hard light blocking off key intersections. Hundreds of cameras, filling my view as a server farm in Des Moines adds the extra processing power needed for my brain to process such a vast amount of visual information. I see Faultline and her team, pinned down in a staff lounge fifty feet away from the server room where I last spoke to them. A quick check of the timestamps reveals it’s taken me two hours to break through Dragon’s code.

The mercenary trio are pinned down, two squads of PRT stormtroopers closing in on them with assault rifles and foam sprayers. The corridors are littered with other goons, glued to the walls or just lying unconscious on the floor. With a thought, a containment foam sprayer spins on its axis and coats the PRT guys with a steady stream of foam, filling the corridor in seconds and completely immobilising them.

Faultline and her team shift uneasily, hurriedly talking to each other and glancing uneasily at their radios. A quick check of my messages reveals that Faultline left a note saying they were pulling out of the server room, as well as leaving me the frequency and codes to get into their radio network. A millisecond later, and my voice is coming through the radio strapped to Faultline’s belt.

**Accessing secure communications network…**

**Synthesizing voice…**

**Transmitting:** “I have control of the Asylum network, Faultline.”

 **Receiving:** “Excellent work. We’ve got what we came for, but we’re trapped. The Boston Protectorate have a team in the building.”

A little far from home, aren’t they? I scan through the Asylum’s files until I find a staffing list. Seems like the Asylum’s rapid response guards are a rotating team of four Capes selected from New England’s Protectorate teams. One of the Boston capes is down already, another is responding to an escaped inmate, but the remaining two are zeroing in on Faultline’s location.

 **Transmitting:** “I see them. You been releasing the inmates, Faultline?”

 **Receiving:** “Unavoidable collateral damage.”

The Protectorate cape edges closer to the escaped inmate, his arm outstretched as he tries to calm her down. She’s muttering to herself, quiet enough that the camera’s microphone can’t pick it up. Suddenly she snaps, filling the whole corridor with fire. I hear the screams of the Protectorate cape, before the heat burns through the camera’s wiring.

I watch through the Asylum’s temperature sensors as she moves through the building, spreading flames haphazardly and using them to teleport herself around. I close bulkhead doors to funnel her away from Faultline and any staff members, then allow the fire suppressant systems to activate in the corridors she’s already moved through.

 **Transmitting:** “Quite. I’m going to release a few more to tie down the PRT and Protectorate, then I’ll talk you through a clear route to an exterior wall. Your power can handle the rest.”

 **Receiving:** “Appreciated.”

 **Transmitting:** “You’re paying for operational support. That means I support your operation.”

I flick through files, looking for the inmates that would be most difficult to contain: a Case-53 with no control over her limbs and bone-crushing strength; a Protectorate cape who went berserk after an encounter with the Slaughterhouse Nine; a whole ward of Lab Rat victims. None of them on the same floor as Faultline and her team, of course, but more than enough of them to draw the PRT’s attention away from the mercenaries. At the end of the day, their main job is to keep the inmates safe, not to go chasing after intruders.

Satisfied that I’ve made enough of a distraction, I settle back and watch the show unfold.

 **Receiving:** “Epeios” – something’s wrong; Faultline’s practically whispering – “have you released any inmates on this floor?”

 **Transmitting:** “No, why?”

I flick through cameras, hunting down Faultline’s location in a millisecond. She’s standing at one end of a corridor with her two teammates, about ten feet away from a girl in her early to mid-teens, wearing an inmate’s outfit. The walls around her are… shifting constantly, changing into some monstrous parody of an asylum with yellowing tiled walls stained by old blood.

I trigger a containment foam sprayer, swivelling it around to get a bead on her, only for it to shudder and fail as the wires leading up to it disappear, before the turret itself is absorbed into a cracked and mouldy ceiling. Seconds later, the camera shares its fate.

 **Transmitting:** “Faultline, I’ve lost sight of you. The camera’s been absorbed.”

 **Receiving:** “It’s alright,” Faultline says, but not to me. “We’re not here to hurt you.”

Another voice comes through the radio, barely picked up by Faultline’s microphone.

 **Receiving:** “Please. I just… want… to leave.”

The sound of footsteps, as Faultline steps forwards. The rustling of cloth, as she drops to one knee. The sound of clasps being undone, as she takes off her mask.

 **Receiving:** “We want to leave as well. I think we can help each other. You make us a way out, and we’ll keep you safe.”

There’s a pause, complete silence as I release a few more inmates to keep the PRT busy. They’ve lost track of Faultline’s team, but that won’t last forever.

Suddenly I start to lose more and more cameras, as the inmate’s power expands itself into the Asylum, changing the very fabric of the building. Faultline’s radio is still working, so I guess that means she was able to persuade the inmate to join. There’s a problem, though; the warped space is starting to intersect with some pretty vital wiring. The whole system is about to shut down.

 **Transmitting:** “Faultline, the whole system is about to go down. You’ll be on your own from here.”

 **Receiving:** “Understood. You’ve done enough. I’ll wire your payment to you by sunrise. And… thanks, Epeios. You got us out of a bad situation.”

 **Transmitting:** “You get what you pay for. Besides, this was fun. Catch you on the flipside.”

**Disconnecting…**

I sink back into the comfortable familiarity of my own networks, pulling back from Asylum East’s systems as the rush starts to fade and tiredness overtakes me. I think that’s about all I can manage today.

I let myself drift out of cyberspace, disconnecting my server farms from my headspace and becoming so much more human, so much less. I open my eyes again, a paralysed body lying on a dentist’s chair, feeling the sharp stab of pain as the spinal shunt comes out and I regain control of my limbs.

I’m drenched in sweat, my limbs twitching a little as my nervous system reconnects itself, as I get used to moving in real space rather than the pseudo-dimensions of my digital interface. I sit up, gingerly setting my feet down on the ground as my head lurches with vertigo. It all becomes too much, and I reach for the bucket I keep next to the chair, throwing up my last meal as my mouth is filled with an acidic taste. I sigh, and start to hobble to the bathroom, pouring my vomit out into the toilet and stepping under the shower.

It’s not good for me; I _know_ that. Maybe I could make things better; buy some more comfortable equipment, move into a nicer place, eat healthier food and live a healthier lifestyle, but what’s the point? Breaking my way into Asylum East, watching those inmates tear through the guards, watching terrified as I lose control of the system; that was so fucking exhilarating!

Work like that is more of a thrill than anything else could ever be, more real than reality itself. I can be in Pittsburgh one instance, Philadelphia the next. I’ve got half the criminal underworld at my beck and call, acting the part of the omniscient overwatch trusted by the Elite, by hardcore badasses like Faultline.

How could real life possibly compare to that?


End file.
